What’s New In ArcGIS 9.2 for CAD: Part 8

Block Attributes and Tags as Annotation

With the increase in home values and housing costs these days it is becoming less likely that any of us who have bought a home in the last couple of years will ever actually pay off our mortgage. My monthly property tax bill is more than the previous owner’s mortgage payments on the same property (Granted the previous owner was the original owner of the house and he had bought it over 40 years ago.)

I’m wondering, is my goal to make sacrifices over the next 30 years and pay off the mortgage, and reduce my costs in old age? Or, do I consider my home an investment that I will cash in to pay for my retirement some time in the future? If so, who cares if I pay it off or not? If I were a financial advisor I might warn myself against putting all of my eggs in one basket, or making my nest egg in my…a… roost…or… (I think my analogy has gone wrong)… anyway diversify, yes diversify… I guess.

Well… I come back to the question again; is my house a lifestyle and quality-of-life asset or is it a financial investment? Since a Blog is a conversation you have with yourself, I will answer myself. Both… the answer is both. Homeownership is both a quality of life choice (something you would pay money to have) and an investment (something that can increase in value and provide you an income over time).

In ArcGIS Microstation tags and AutoCAD block attributes are considered tabular attributes of a CAD entity and in most cases that is how they are used in CAD maps. For that reason when ArcGIS views a CAD drawing as a set of features it has always included the block attributes and tag values in the feature attribute table of the CAD features.

It is common in ArcMap to annotate features in a map with attributes values stored in a feature’s attribute table. The same thing is true in CAD. The fact that block attribute values are visible or invisible is enough to warrant similar treatment in ArcGIS. Tags and block attributes SHOULD be included in the ANNOTATION feature class of a CAD feature data set.

In ArcGIS 9.2 Microstation tag values and AutoCAD block attributes ARE included in both the feature attribute table of the entities they are linked to as well as being included as annotation in the CAD Annotation feature class. Previously I would have to use the labeling feature of ArcMap to make the block attributes visible, by selecting the tag or block attribute as the field to label. Or, I would have to convert the values in the attribute table to a geodatabase annotation feature class as a separate step in ArcMap.

Continue to Part 9

What’s New In ArcGIS 9.2 for CAD: Part 7

CAD Feature Dataset as ArcMap Group Layer

Tonight my wife’s piano students are having a recital. Most of their recitals are held in a hall in a church, but from time to time we host them in our home. Tonight the recital is going to be in our living/dining rooms. To accommodate all of our guests we bring essentially every chair we own and rearrange the living room into concert seating. Luckily the piano is on wheels and can be easily moved.

Like collecting all the chairs spread out in all the different rooms in our house, it makes good sense to organize the feature classes belonging to a CAD file into an ArcMap Group Layer. organizing drawing layers in ArcMap into group layer collections makes for more harmonious viewing. ArcMap group layers allow you to associate multiple layers as a single entry in the table of contents and then control the collection of layer’s visibility display properties as a group.

In ArcGIS 9.2 grouping the POINT, POLYLINE, POLYGON, ANNOTATION and MULTIPART default CAD features classes of a CAD drawing into an ArcMap Group Layer is the default behavior when the entire blue folder dataset is added to ArcMap.

If you select a single CAD feature class from within the dataset folder it is added individually as a single map layer.

With a CAD feature datasets improved default rendering coupled with the automatic layer grouping in ArcMap there are two less reasons to consider the CAD Drawing Layer representation (white icon) in ArcMap.

Continue to Part 8

What’s New In ArcGIS 9.2 for CAD: Part 6

Improved Rendering of CAD Features Classes

Hotrods and choppers used to be salvage vehicles built by people who couldn’t afford something new. Now, more new cars and motorcycles are being designed to look more like those customized versions. Ironically, I suspect this is a move by motorcycle and automakers to capture the lower-end market that can’t afford the modern choppers and hotrods we see built on the discovery channel!

Like having the styling of the hotrod and the reliability of power steering and power breaks, people want the benefits of both methods of working with CAD data in ArcMap. They want the feature class access provided by the CAD Feature Class (blue icon) and the default CAD symbology of the CAD Drawing Layer (white icon). Most often people choose the blue icon to add CAD features to the map, and the first thing they do is change the symbology of the CAD feature class to make it look more like the CAD file was drawn in CAD.

In previous versions of ArcGIS, CAD features are treated like other GIS data sources and are assigned a single random symbol for the entire feature class. In ArcGIS 9.2 the initial symbology is based on the CAD symbology. CAD color, line style, font, line weight and other information is used to draw the CAD features like they appear inside the CAD application that created them. With the release of ArcGIS 9.2 the need for the two different methods for working with CAD data is greatly diminished. With ArcGIS 9.2, I can’t think of a good reason to use the CAD Drawing Layer (white icon) anymore.

In ArcGIS 9.2 you can still use the CAD Drawing Layer (white icon) to draw all of the CAD entities with CAD properties as a single layer; however the new default symbology for the CAD feature class is actually better. For example, the white icon doesn’t support true type fonts, standard CAD line styles or line weights. Work has been done to create a CAD symbology set for standard CAD symbology values including line style, line weight and standard CAD color values. In ArcGIS 9.2 the “more useful” CAD feature class representation (blue icons) of the CAD data, also has superior default symbology, as compared with the single CAD Drawing Layer (white icon).

Improved default symbology for CAD text associates true type fonts used in CAD to true type fonts available in ArcMap. Default values for complex CAD text justification are also improved, which means CAD text in ArcMap looks more like it did in CAD.

Continue to Part 7

What’s New In ArcGIS 9.2 for CAD: Part 5

UI Standardization and Expanded CAD Data Help

I'll be heading to IHEEP 2006 in Williamsburg, VA next week and I hope to see some familiar faces working in transportaion there. I attended an EGUG conference in historic Williamsburg a couple of years ago. While there I learned more about early US history and government than I had learned up till then. I look forward to resuming my conversations with Patrick Henry and the gunsmith!

I will also be attending this year's EGUG 2006 Conference at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I'll be presenting a technical session on GIS and CAD Translation and Interoperability.

Today I’ll cover two new features in ArcGIS 9.2 for CAD: ArcGIS User Interface standardization and ArcGIS includes a help section dedicated to working with CAD data.

For the UI changes you can view the differences and for the help it probably best that you just read it.

The UI changes only affect GIS users expecting to see something a certain way. In the past dialog boxes that were associated with CAD data were different, for no real reason. In the cases where the dialog boxes are specific to CAD data, like the Layer Properties dialog box there are enhancents that give you more information about the layer in a more intuitive format. Here are some examples of new dialog boxes for CAD Feature Classes in ArcGIS 9.2:

One nice thing about the new help system for ArcGIS 9.2 is that it is online now for you to read in advance of the release of ArcGIS 9.2. Included in the help system are the descriptions of the new dialog boxes.

Continue to Part 6

What’s New In ArcGIS 9.2 for CAD: Part 4

Improved Text/Annotation Support

I have a handy man friend of mine who has a bumper sticker on his truck that reads:

"If It Ain’t Broke, Fix It Till It Is!"

...Agreed it doesn’t inspire much confidence in his work, but for anyone who ventures into the miry world of doing-it-yourself it has a ring of truth to it.

I have a little mechanical machine that cleans the bottom of my pool. I acquired it from the previous owner of the house as part of the pool equipment. It was the only inanimate object that he had ever named (Henry) in honor of the fact that it did such a good job at what it was supposed to do. That device retails new for around $500 and this weekend it stopped working after some 20 years of daily use. On the web I was able to find an exploded diagram of all the parts of the unit, so that I could take it apart with at least some confidence that one or another part could be disassembled. I broke 4 parts while doing so; Two plastic bolts, a wheel bearing set, and a quick release fitting! The parts that originally needed replacing were the axel bearing sets. After two days and 3 trips to the pool supply store I finally got what I need and Henry never worked better!

Like Henry, Annotation/Text support has been improved to function more like you would expect it to. Specifically the enhancement to CAD text rendering is that the CAD properties are used to render the file based annotation symbology in ArcGIS 9.2 rather than defaulting to black ARIAL font. When a CAD file uses a true-type font in the CAD text style definition ArcGIS will also use that same true-type font to render the characters. ArcGIS 9.2 still does not support CAD vector defined fonts. However, positioning and the general symbology for viewing in ArcGIS and generating CAD text using the Export to CAD tool are significantly improved.

Continue to Part 5